Avoid Buying Your Frozen Dinners From Hungry Man Brand Or Risk A Textural Nightmare

The world of frozen dinners is a vast landscape full of both wonders and horrors. One frozen chicken dinner might tantalize your taste buds like a home-cooked meal, while the same dinner from a different brand might make you want to run at warp speed to the nearest restroom.

Frozen dinners go back several decades, and we do wish we could get our hands on some of those old-school vintage dinners. Overall, these frozen meals do get a bit of a bad rap, simply because it's hard to recreate a full meal that tastes anything close to something freshly cooked. But when we set out to rank nine popular frozen meal brands, we did find some wonders. However, we also found some horrors — and topping that list of ghastly dinners was the classic Hungry Man brand. 

Specifically, we reviewed Hungry Man's boneless fried chicken meal and roasted turkey dinner, both of which come with mashed potatoes that might serve well as drywall paste. For both of these meals, the taste and texture left a lot to be desired. In fact, these Hungry Man meals were just downright bad.

The only thing Hungry Man has going for it is that each frozen dinner is definitely fit for a large, hungry man — it's a lot of food! But that's where the fun stops. The boneless fried chicken is essentially a giant chicken nugget paired with gluey mashed potatoes and tasteless corn. The roasted turkey tasted like processed lunchmeat. Those mashed potatoes showed up again, only palatable when covered in gravy. The only thing from either of these meals that could be considered decent were the stuffing and the cranberry apple dessert (the latter of which was actually pretty delicious).

The Hungry Man brand has quite a few frozen dinner options. While we can't attest to the quality of all its meals, we can say with certainty to avoid the boneless fried chicken and the roasted turkey. Certainly the brand must have better options. In terms of other frozen dinner brands we reviewed, the big winner was none other than Guy Fieri's Flavortown and its version of fiesta beef taco pasta and chili cheese dog loaded tots. Guy Fieri and his frozen meals were a surprising winner, but both options tasted delicious and held up well to being heated. The ground beef tasted just like freshly browned meat, and the loaded tots were packed with flavor without any of that typical microwave chewiness. At $6 each, these dinners were a little pricey compared to Hungry Man's $3.74, but definitely worth the cost. 

It is possible to pair convenience and quality, but Hungry Man goes all convenience and leaves quality in the great abyss of the frozen dinner wasteland. At least for the specific meals we reviewed, say yes to Guy Fieri and run far, far away from the Hungry Man brand.